I have been listening to Julia Holter’s second album Ekstasis for around a month – much longer than I would normally have been listening to a record before writing about it, such is the speed at which this kind of thing moves now. A bit of time is important for Julia Holter’s music I think – these songs have been composed in a slow, exploratory manner, developed and grown over time, out of improvisation, collaboration and experimentation.

In a way this is the exact opposite to something like the restless, short-attention-span-composition of the Grimes album, which is being released in the UK at the same time as Ekstasis. However, a bit of time may be important for you as a listener too – these are certainly well-crafted songs but Holter’s willingness to let the music go where it needs to can cause them to meander out of touching distance, while the insular atmosphere here can exclude you just as easily as it can absorb.

So, I initially found the album difficult to warm to, and though this has changed over time, I can’t say that I’ve been completely won over. But I have continued to listen – Ekstasis is one of the most distinctive-sounding albums released in a long time, built out of what can seem like infinite layers of sound that reference folk, electronica, pop, ambient and drone without ever settling in one place. You find yourself wanting to return to it, even when it never quite gives completely, always keeping you at arm’s length.

Melodies overlap – as on the album’s most ‘pop’ moment, ‘In The Same Room’, where two characters are allowed to converse – or are strung out and then left behind. As a result, the atmospheres veer between retro-futurism (the vocoder on ‘Goddess Eyes II’ is alienating at first, before somehow becoming one of the album’s melodic and affective highpoints) or church-like and meditative (as on the latter part of the clouded Beach House pop of ‘Our Sorrows’). As a fairly succinct way of summarising how these two elements overlap, album opener ‘Marienbad’ combines the two, with Holter layering her voice into a simultaneously unsettling and enchanting robotic choir.

The longer tracks take on similar themes and sounds, though they expand and abstract them – ‘Boy In The Moon’ is pure escapism with Holter’s voice at its most appealing in the wordless melodies, though the “This plane is taking off” lyrics and sci-fi synth flourishes can be a little cloying over eight minutes – it’s not so much a mid-record palette cleanser, as something that makes you long for the return of the more accessible moments. In contrast, ‘Four Gardens’ shows Holter as perfectly adept at reintroducing pop while also giving her experimental tendencies room to breathe – it combines one of the album’s finest melodies with occasion bursts of saxophone and emotive, shifting ambience.

So while Ekstasis can offer plenty in terms of melody, depth of sound and sheer breadth of vision, it also makes itself difficult to warm to completely, drifting off as it does into abstract, ambient passages that can be off-putting rather than expanding and broadening the atmospheres Holter has so carefully constructed. It becomes, then, something you can very easily stand back from, and admire and applaud (you may have read all the breathless reviews already), but up close, Ekstasis is difficult to love, though intriguing to explore. We’ve established that time is important here though – and you sense that Holter has created an album that will continue to demand our time for a long while yet. After all, why can’t an album mystify and delight?